Three Experts Weigh In On The Best Resource Management Techniques

At Mavenlink, we work with thousands of profitable companies that are growing fast. To accommodate their rapid growth — and remain profitable — our clients have to manage resources skillfully.

Effective resource management means maximizing utilization rates, strategically matching supply with demand, and understanding the real-time and projected landscape of workloads. It means hiring, scheduling, and managing resources for success. It’s such a challenge to get it right, many consider it the black art of services delivery.

So, how do they do it? We polled Mavenlink clients to understand the most effective resource management techniques in their business. This is what they said.

1. Learn your real-time utilization rate, down to the employee

Expert:
Erika Bellido, Blue State Digital, Operations Analyst

Company:
Blue State Digital (BSD) serves well-known advocacy groups and brands with digital marketing services. Clients include Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Google, and the Green Bay Packers. Their work involves driving people-focused digital engagement.

Bottom line:
BSD relies on automated, near real-time utilization reports to keep planners and managers on point with current capacity.

The last word:
“Our reports are created in [Mavenlink] that has all of our data. It gives us a real picture of what’s going on.”

2. Get your field workers access to office information

Expert:
Frank Zare, APlus Interior Design & Remodeling, Business Systems Analyst

Company:
APlus Interior Design & Remodeling is one of the largest construction companies offering interior design in southern California.  With more than 30 years’ experience, APlus provides complete remodels from old-home-down to new-home-up.

Bottom line:
APlus manages hundreds of projects. Field workers are constantly needing access to read and edit shared office information, including files, schedules, and photos. To scale, APlus moved its resources off a cloud file-share service (i.e., Dropbox) and onto a full project platform. This lets anyone access information anywhere, any time.

The last word:
“Our teams have the ability to work on documents in unison and make changes in real-time.”

3. Know — don’t guess at — who has bandwidth to take on a project

Expert:
Amelia Carpenter, Creoworks Interior Designer and Project Coordinator

Company:
Creoworks is a design and fabrications studio that creates custom pieces for companies such as Google, GoDaddy, and Microsoft. Here, architects, designers, artists, builders, and more work one-on-one with clients to create unique furniture pieces and spatial solutions that aren’t just functional — they’re inspirational.

Bottom line:
After working with clients to decide what the vision, Creoworks uses their project delivery cloud to assess who has the bandwidth to work on the assignment. This, in turn, influences budget and timeline and offers transparency to the client regarding who will work on what.

The last word:
“Every employee uses the timesheet tool to track time for every project, which is helpful for billing clients. Mavenlink is also helpful for the Creoworks owners to see what each person has done on the project.”

Want to learn more about Resource Planning?
Download our Definitive Guide to Resource Mangement!